


Crack It Open

by M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (aka Melissa McCall), A lot of things get broken but not characters, AO3 won't let me add to series or do separate ANs right now, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Adorable Isaac Lahey, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awesome Melissa McCall, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Family Bonding, Family Feels, Gen, Good Parent Melissa McCall, In Which They Both Have PTSD To Some Degree And It Is Addressed, Isaac Lahey Feels, Isaac Lahey is stubborn, Isaac talks about life with his dad for the first time with Melissa, Melissa is in way over her head but that's not going to stop her, Melissa talks about her marriage, POV Melissa McCall, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, So is Melissa McCall - Freeform, They're already a little broken, Warnings for Isaac's father even though he doesn't personally appear because he's super dead, but a lot more to go, but they're healing, on her way to becoming pack mom Melissa McCall, some healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:00:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28698822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng/pseuds/M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng
Summary: Isaac really doesn't like talking about himself or his dad. Melissa is content to wait until he's ready. Until an accident brings a specific issue to the forefront and starts the ball rolling.
Relationships: Isaac Lahey & Isaac Lahey's Father, Isaac Lahey & Melissa McCall, past Melissa McCall/Rafael McCall
Comments: 10
Kudos: 57





	Crack It Open

**Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Wolf, its characters, settings, or events; all rights belong to their respective creators.**

**This is very loosely a sequel to my previous story Bottle It Up. The only things that really carry over from that fic to this is the concept Melissa introduced Isaac to of jars in which you or loved ones can put money whenever something to do with a certain issue (in Melissa's case, her ex; in Isaac's, his father) arises, and the idea that the word "project" is a trigger for Isaac (which is extrapolated from Isaac's flashback to his dad deciding to lock him in the freezer the first time, after he failed to fix it and blamed Isaac for that).**

**TRIGGER WARNING: There is no actual abuse in this fic, but there is discussion of both child and spousal abuse in the past (physical, mental, and emotional; mainly the latter two), both characters get triggered at various points, though they don't have the words for it, and there is some fairly heavy discussion of abuse and the mental fallout of living with it. Isaac has some very unhealthy thought processes and this is not a quick fix.**

* * *

**Crack It Open**

* * *

Melissa McCall had never been a morning person, even before she started working night shifts, and Scott had inherited that. Historically, mornings in the McCall house had been a quiet affair full of sleepy mumbling and lethargic shuffling and squinting into the newly bright sunlight like they would be deeply offended by its presence if they only had the energy.

This was before Isaac Lahey showed up at their door looking pitiful and half drowned and Melissa had decided he was hers.

Melissa didn't know if it was something he was born with or if it was bred of a combination of a desperate need for a fresh start and the fact that a drunk like his father was probably sleeping and/or quietly nursing a hangover in the mornings, but for whatever reason Isaac was a morning person.

And it was the best thing to ever happen to mornings in this house.

Once he got past the initial awkwardness of his inability to take permission for anything for granted, Isaac had started preparing hearty breakfasts to "start the day off right," stammering and blushing under their awe and waving away mumbled thanks and compliments like they were foreign objects he didn't understand the purpose of. It broke Melissa's heart, later, when she was aware enough to process things that had already happened, but in the moment it was generally just adorable. (She may have actually said that out loud once; she couldn't quite remember afterward—and neither could Scott when she asked—but Isaac avoided her even more than normal for a solid day and a half, so chances were good she had.)

When Melissa thought of these hazy mornings, Isaac feeding them, rescuing dropped utensils, making sure they made it all the way into chairs, and, Melissa suspected, ensuring Scott's school stuff made it into his backpack and the backpack made it by the door, it was always with a warm, content feeling in her chest that she associated with her boys being safe and happy.

That didn't mean there weren't any . . . mishaps. After all, Isaac was the only one fully awake and Melissa and Scott outnumbered him.

Maybe it was inevitable, maybe it wasn't, but the only surprise was that it had taken this long: Isaac, turning to put yet another perfect pancake on an already twice-emptied plate, caught Melissa's empty coffee mug with an elbow as she passed too close behind him on her way to the machine.

It shattered on the floor and while Melissa and Scott were still processing, Isaac had already dropped to a crouch, spatula still in hand as he scrabbled for shards of . . . whatever coffee mugs are made out of.

It took Melissa too long to sort out what was wrong, but the eventual realization and accompanying emotion woke her up way more than her intended cup of coffee would have: Isaac was absolutely frantic, juggling spatula and pieces of broken mug like his life depended on it while desperately repeating apologies; his shaking hands were dotted with blood from nicks and cuts; he looked so much smaller than someone his size should ever be able to manage.

"Isaac," she sighed.

"I'm sorry," was the only reply, panicked. It tore her heart out.

She crouched down, reaching for him and speaking softly, "Isaac, stop."

He froze, tense under her hand and somehow even smaller than he had been, and his hands gripped the shards he was clutching so hard blood started to drip from his fists.

Scott inhaled sharply on the other side of Isaac and when she looked up his eyes were glowing as red as Isaac's blood. She lifted a hand from Isaac's shoulder to gesture for Scott to leave; the movement, behind Isaac's back, made him flinch, but it kept Scott from worrying him more.

Now alone, she turned her full attention back to Isaac, scanning him with a practiced eye. The blood was no longer dripping from his hands, which likely meant the wounds had already sealed; getting them cleaned was a priority, but not an emergency. He was breathing, a little more shallowly than she'd like, but steady. She couldn't see his eyes at all, let alone his pupils, but he was aware of what was happening around him, so that probably wasn't an immediate necessity either. There was a fine sheen of sweat at his hairline, probably anxiety rather than fever. He was wearing shoes and he'd crouched rather than knelt, so he didn't appear to have any injuries other than his hands.

"Okay," she muttered, as much to herself as to him, her hand automatically moving in a soothing circle.

"I'm sorry," Isaac croaked out in a strangled whisper in response.

"You have nothing to be sorry for."

"I broke it," he said, like the reluctant confession of a much younger child, offering up a view of the broken pieces in his hands as evidence.

"Accidents happen," Melissa said pragmatically. "And it was probably more my fault than yours."

He glanced up at her quickly in shock, too quick for her to check his pupils.

"It's okay," she assured him, wrapping her hands loosely around his and tilting them to dump the jagged, bloody mess away and get a better look at his injuries. "Come here," she said, standing and pulling him with her, "to the sink. Let's wash away all this blood and make sure you're healing up alright."

"I am," Isaac offered weakly; Melissa ignored him professionally except to click her tongue in admonishment. He sounded dazed, she noted; it was probably just confusion and worry, but Melissa was going to check his vitals at the first chance anyway.

He didn't resist at all as she pulled him to the sink, discarded the spatula, and fussed over his palms, and didn't more than wince once or twice as she pulled embedded shards from his skin. She took the opportunity while holding his hands under the faucet to check his pulse at the wrist; it was quick, but not worryingly so.

After a last rinse and visual check, she hurried around him to the stove to grab a dishtowel (and turn off the stove). When she turned back, he was still standing exactly where she'd left him, shoulders hunched and open palms dripping water back into the sink, but he'd twisted his head around to watch her with wide eyes.

"Here," she said, offering the towel as she took the few steps back towards him. He shook his hands off once and turned to grab it and she took the opportunity while he was facing her to reach for his forehead; he froze and blinked and met her eyes for the first time that morning, which, bingo—his pupils were slightly dilated but not more than you would expect from an anxiety attack. She reached for his wrist automatically, and he handed her the towel instead, leaving her standing there awkwardly.

"I'll clean this up," Isaac said like it was a given and he was just confirming. "And I'll replace the cup, I promise."

She started to tell him not to worry about it, not to spend his money on things for her or waste his time when he had school soon, that she had a dozen other mugs in her cabinets. But his expression was pleading and desperate and she realized he was scared of not being able to fix this somehow. If he wasn't able to do something about this now, it would hang over his head forever. "Okay," she said instead, mind spinning with ways to help him move past this. "Use the broom and dust pan to clean this up, _not_ your hands. I don't want you cutting yourself again."

Isaac frowned in confusion, but visibly swallowed any questions or protest.

"I don't care if you heal," Melissa answered anyway; he looked more confused. "It still hurts." She paused while he eyed her consideringly. "Any questions?" she offered after a beat.

His face went blank. "No?"

Melissa hoped _her_ face showed that she wasn't buying that for a second and was unimpressed at the attempt. "Hmm."

* * *

Just about every month, Melissa pulled up to ten dollars from her jar to spend on something for the boys. No one knew about this; she called it "mental health money" and justified it by reminding herself that the happiness of her boys was key to her own happiness, which was the purpose of the jar, and that Rafe would have thought it was a complete waste (which was the secondary purpose of the jar, even if he'd never know it existed). She'd started doing it even before she got her jar, when she and Rafe were still together and he'd started denying Scott little things on the basis that "asthma was expensive" and "every penny counted" (which did not stop him from spending money on beer or gambling—no, not focusing on that right now, that is old anger and we are letting that go, deep breaths, Melissa). And now she was going to dump whatever loose change she had in her purse into the jar, just for that, and then move on to now, when she's taking ten dollars out and spending it on as much cheap dishware as she can from the thrift store.

Turns out ten dollars can buy more dishware than the nearest Goodwill had, so she'd driven the extra ten minutes to the more expensive local thrift store and now she had a whole box full and forty-six cents leftover for Isaac's jar.

She'd switched shifts with a friend, so her afternoon was clear.

She'd texted Scott, sending him to Stiles's until at least dinnertime and ensuring that Isaac didn't join them, so that it would just be the two of them.

Now she just had to wait for Isaac to get home from school. And not freak him out by making it obvious that she was waiting for him, _especially_ given this morning, and the fact that Scott knew she had something planned, but not what, and was a terrible liar (she probably should have texted Stiles; that boy never met a situation he couldn't spin).

It would be fine.

Eventually.

* * *

Isaac had a habit of moving silently, ingrained so deeply into him for so long that it was in no way conscious, and despite the fact that he always felt bad when he startled somebody because of it, he couldn't stop himself without specifically focusing on it. Worried as he was today, he definitely wasn't focused on whether or not he was making noise. Which is why she only discovered Isaac had come home when she emerged from stress-cleaning behind the toilet to a very large shape looming in the corner of her eye.

She screamed.

"Sorry," Isaac blurted, hands out towards her as he backed further into the hallway. "Sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm sorry. I forgot to make noise. I didn't think about it. I'm so sorry."

Melissa laughed. She couldn't help it. "No, it's fine," she said between breaths, waving her hand. "It's fine. You just startled me. Good for the heart," she joked. Isaac snorted.

Then he held out the little white box she was just now registering in his hand. "They didn't sell coffee cups by themselves."

Melissa stood and reached for the box, finding two dark blue mugs ensconced inside. "Perfect," she praised, watching as Isaac relaxed like he'd passed a test she didn't know she was giving and lit up with a grin. "Now you and I will have a matching pair." She brushed by him with a smile—returned with a confused blink—and headed towards the stairs.

"Come on," she called over her shoulder, "I've got a project for you."

* * *

She wasn't completely sure he was following until she reached the box of dishware she'd left on the kitchen table and turned back to find him hovering at the bottom of the stairs, frowning like he was working out a puzzle and biting his lip like it wasn't a good one.

 _Okay,_ she told her nerves, _that's fine. Isaac's always nervous whenever he's the focus of attention or doesn't know what's expected of him. It'll be fine._

She beckoned him closer, but he only took a few jerky steps before stuttering to a stop halfway.

That was less normal; when he didn't know what was expected of him, Isaac liked to figure it out as soon as possible, which for him meant immediate and complete compliance to anything asked of him until he got a handle on it and taking in as much information as possible. He was still too far away and wouldn't even look at the box—his eyes kept sliding away like it was physically painful—even though he had to know the box was the point of this whole thing. Melissa was missing something here.

_You are a nurse and a single mother of two and a half teenage boys—two of which are werewolves!—and Isaac is one of the strongest people you've ever met. It'll be fine._

She added whatever this was to her ever-growing list of things to bring up if Isaac ever felt comfortable actually discussing his father (which might never happen, but she believed in being prepared).

Instead of saying anything, she reached into the box and pulled out a chipped mug with a faded, warped design advertising some kind of car and held it out to him at arm's length, waiting patiently as he studied her and the mug for a few seconds before taking a step forward and reaching for it.

The way he was acting, like he was looking for a trap in everything she was doing, she wondered if he was surprised to find it completely normal as he turned it over in his hands, eyes locked on every detail. She could see him coming to some sort of conclusion, probably wrong considering the shame and resignation on his face and the way his jaw locked in anger, but she continued to wait him out.

Finally, he looked up, eyes flickering over her face. "I'm sorry," he said, calm but strained. "About your cup and about the mess this morning."

"Don't worry about it," she said dismissively. She was going to continue, but his jaw flexed and she decided to wait and see what he was thinking instead.

"I can't fix the cup," he spat after a few seconds, eyes on the floor somewhere between them. "But I got you a new one, _two_ new ones! And—" He literally bit the words off, clamping his mouth shut abruptly. _It's not fair_ , his expression finished anyway.

Melissa paused to gather her thoughts. "I think," she said slowly after a minute, "we have a miscommunication here." Isaac snorted harshly, and she had to rein back her instinctive flash of anger. "You are much more bothered by this morning than I am," she informed him firmly. "This project is not some kind of twisted punishment, or a trap, or whatever you think this is. Okay? This is—" She paused again, thinking of the best way to explain it; she'd been running over this plan all day, but everything flew out the window the second her kid looked nervous and now where was she?

"You looked so scared this morning," she said frankly. His jaw clenched and he flushed and she couldn't tell if he was angry or embarrassed or frustrated or what. "I don't usually address the stuff that's because of your dad directly, but clearly beating around the bush is not working here." That was probably a poor choice of words, but too late now. "I care about you, Isaac, and it hurts when you're scared. If I could, I would take away all your experiences that gave you that fear in the first place, but I can't do that. So instead we have this." She stepped cautiously closer and reached out to touch the mug still in his hand; he immediately offered it to her, but she refused to take it. "I figure," she said slowly, looking down at the mug, "every time something broke, something bad happened to you. So you associate breaking things with being in trouble and probably being hurt in some way." She glanced up then and he nodded like he thought an answer was expected. She nodded to herself in confirmation. "You can't just erase associations; that's not how our brains work," she explained, "but what we can do is build new, _good_ associations so that your brain has options and doesn't automatically go to scared _every_ time. Sometimes it still will, but sometimes it won't." She moved her hand from the mug to his wrist and squeezed to get his attention. "Hey." He looked up. "This isn't a cure-all. We're not going to fix everything in a single afternoon and some things might never be what you might consider 'fixed,' but we can smooth the rough places and make things _better_." She waited a beat for the idea to settle. "You wanna give it a shot?"

He nodded. Raised his chin, squared his shoulders, set his jaw, with a frown of concentration between his eyes. (His older brother had been a soldier, Sheriff Stilinski had said, and she had a sudden image of a much younger Isaac playing army, trying so hard to be like big brother; she tucked that away to coo over later, in private.)

"What do you want me to do?" he asked like he was preparing for battle (he probably was, but she couldn't help smiling anyway).

"First, come here," she ordered, tugging lightly at his wrist. He came easily, right up to the point that she wrapped him in a hug. He stiffened immediately with a sharp inhale, but relaxed after a few seconds, tucking his face down towards her shoulder and tentatively grabbing onto her shirt. She held him there, rocking gently back and forth, until he pulled away.

"Okay," she said, and he instantly straightened up again. "We're going for options, right?" He nodded. "So I figure we go at it from different angles. First." She grabbed at where he was holding the mug in both hands, gripped tight like nothing was more important in the world, and raised it up into view between them. "What is this?"

"A coffee cup."

"Yes." She moved her hand, pointing a finger at his chest. "And what are you?"

"A werewolf," he said with a stupid grin. She rolled her eyes.

"A _person_ ," she corrected with fake irritation. She huffed a laugh. "Now, which do you think is more important, a coffee cup or a person?"

Isaac squinted suspiciously. "A person."

Melissa beamed back at him innocently. "Right. And given that a person is more important than a coffee cup, and you are, in fact, a person, which is more important, you or a coffee cup?" Isaac was silent. "I'm gonna need you to say it," Melissa prodded.

"Me," Isaac almost whispered.

"You what?"

"I—" Isaac's jaw worked but nothing came out.

After a moment, Melissa finished for him. "You're more important than a coffee cup. Agreed?" Isaac nodded shortly. She was pretty sure he was angry now. "Can you say it?"

"Why?" he burst out. "It's silly."

"No, of course, you're right," Melissa deadpanned. "It's completely silly of me to think that you would ever worry that I would do something awful to you because of a broken mug, from which one might conclude that you are not _completely_ sure that you are more important to me than a coffee cup. That would never happen."

Isaac gritted his teeth, but complied. "I'm more important than a coffee cup. Satisfied?"

"Are you angry?"

"Yes," he bit out. Then he pulled back. "No. I don't know."

"It's okay if you are."

"I don't know if I am." There was an awkward moment where they both just stood there and Isaac pretended they weren't doing that. "I'm sorry I freaked out this morning and scared you. I know it was stupid."

"It wasn't stupid."

"Scott doesn't freak out like that."

"Scott used to freak out like that whenever he didn't have his inhaler on him and now he sometimes does over werewolf stuff. He thinks I don't know that, so don't mention it to him. Different people have different experiences. Your experiences have taught you that broken dishes are things to freak out over. That's perfectly normal and definitely not stupid."

There was a pause while he digested that, much more comfortable than the previous.

"Are you angry, do you think," Melissa asked, "or are you embarrassed and upset because you think you did something stupid and now we're talking about it?"

He thought for a minute. "The last one, I think."

Melissa nodded. "Okay. That's normal, too." Isaac huffed in dismissal. Melissa sighed but decided to ignore it.

"My point," she said instead, "is that you are more important to me than every dish in this house, combined. Than all the dishes in the world, actually. Do you understand that?" Isaac nodded automatically. "I don't think you do," she said frankly, "not really, but you've heard it, so it's in your head now and someday it might click. But for now we're moving on." He looked ridiculously relieved, so that was probably the right decision.

She tapped the mug in his hand. "Positive associations. You break something and nothing bad happens."

He blinked, unconsciously cradling the mug close to his chest protectively. "What?"

"Throw it," she suggested.

He shook his head immediately. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Don't throw it _at_ me." She tried for teasing, but not making light and not allowing her own memories of her marriage to surface, and she wasn't sure what she ended up with, but he didn't react badly so that was alright.

"When dishes break," he said with the air of an expert, calm and sure in his knowledge, "pieces go all over the place and they're sharp and they can still hurt you, even if you don't get hit by the dish itself."

She nodded, because she knew that and because she wanted him to know that she understood. "I could stand behind you?" she offered.

He shot an assessing glance around the kitchen like he was judging the angles and working out the math in his head before nodding and stepping closer to the table to let her pass. He watched her carefully, shooting glances between her and the rest of the space, completely unsatisfied as she backed up further and further, until she had rounded the bottom of the staircase and was technically no longer in the kitchen; it was flattering and adorable and a little exasperating, but she said nothing.

He looked down at the mug in his hands for a long moment, turning it over and over slowly.

Then he looked back at her questioningly.

At her nod and reassuring smile, he drew a deep breath and turned most of the way away from her.

And very gently lobbed the mug onto the floor just a few feet away.

It broke, but only into about three large pieces and maybe the same number of smaller pieces, and all the pieces pretty much stayed where they fell. One of the larger pieces spun in place like a top for a few extended seconds.

When the last piece finally rocked to a stop, Isaac immediately looked back at her, tense, gauging her reaction. "You could do better," she told him. He huffed. "Try again," she suggested, gesturing at the box.

Eyebrows lifted in surprise, he peeked inside the box and fished out a mug that looked like it had been finger-painted by a small child (she felt a little bad about destroying that one, but this was about _her_ child). He lifted it up for her appraisal and she nodded, cheering "Throw it!"

He laughed. "How many of these do—?"

"All of them."

At his overwhelmed and vaguely horrified expression, she smiled angelically.

* * *

She counted six broken dishes before he stopped checking with her before pulling each one from the box. He still didn't have a lot of confidence in the actual breaking, but his shoulders were loose and she was pretty sure he was silently laughing the last two times she cheered.

She rewarded his progress with a story.

"We had really crappy furniture in our apartment before this house," she began as he pulled the next dish from the box; Isaac paused and looked back, watching her as she continued, "so when we moved here, Rafe decided to leave it all behind. Which meant for about the first week, we were living here with no furniture at all. We figured for dinner we'd just push a couple boxes together to use as a table. Rafe didn't want to sit on the floor, so he pulled over another box. Halfway through dinner he shifts just so and there's this _pop-crunch_ from inside the box. Turns out he was sitting on the fancy china his mom had given us for our wedding. That was the first time one of us broke a dish since we were married," she mused, "I think how someone responds when dishes break says a lot about them."

She found she'd mentally wandered and, with it, her eyes had moved off of Isaac, and when she looked back he was strung tight as a live wire, jaw clenched.

"Anyway. He'd only broken one, but he ended up making it worse because he was frustrated and in such a hurry to make it like it never happened, which isn't even possible, that he didn't read the instructions on the fancy glue too closely and missed that you were supposed to let it set for forty-eight hours before doing anything with it, like stacking seven other plates and eight bowls on top of it. He made sure to put the broken one on the bottom, to hide it, so what ended up happening was that it got glued to the bottom of the cabinet and to the next plate on top of it. Then a couple months later, when his mom came to visit and he wanted me to use the fancy china and we figured out what happened, he broke the edge off that next one trying to pry them both loose in a rage, even though we only needed four plates." She rolled her eyes and Isaac snorted derisively in agreement. "So then he had to glue that back on—in the cabinet, cause they were still stuck—and whined constantly about the other dishes having to be out on the counter while it dried." She paused, debating how to phrase the next part. "He was always mad about it. Every time he saw them in the cabinet, or his mom mentioned them, or we had some kind of fancy dinner and didn't have enough of those particular plates to use, he'd pitch a fit. I told him we could try finding solvent, maybe ask someone at the hardware store for what would work, but he figured I didn't know what I was talking about; they were glued there and that was it. Six years after we moved in, he destroyed the entire cabinet and all but one of those plates, plus about half of our other dishes, pitching a fit 'cause they were still glued in place."

Isaac looked away and worked his jaw like he was gonna say something, so she waited. "My dad liked to throw things, especially when he got mad," he said eventually. "Just—" He shrugged, flipping his hands out. "—whatever was at hand usually." He paused, picking at the plate in his hand, smoothing a finger over the edge. "He got mad at the dinner table a lot, so it was dishes a lot. And then he'd blame me for the mess in the kitchen, and I'd have to clean it up. He'd blame me if I got hurt by it. And whenever he went for something and it wasn't there anymore, or we had to buy new dishes, he'd get mad all over again."

"None of those things were your fault."

Isaac shrugged.

Melissa resisted the urge to hug him. "It wasn't your fault."

"I'm the one that made him mad."

"Rafe blamed me for breaking all our dishes. Was that my fault?"

"No," Isaac said, absolutely certain. "How could it be?"

"Hmm."

"Yeah, okay," Isaac said, in that way he had of agreeing but also completely brushing off whatever you said.

"One of them was my fault," Melissa volunteered. "I was sifting through the wreckage and found one of those stupid plates that had somehow managed to survive in one piece and I just lost it a little, stood up, yelled, and just smashed it right back down onto the pile of broken pieces. I like to think I was making a point about how childish Rafe was, but really I was just really, really mad and I really, really hated those stupid plates. It was pointless and just as childish, but you better believe it felt good."

Isaac smiled, clearly happy for her.

But she wasn't finished. "One time when Scott was about nine or ten, he snuck ice cream out of the freezer and he was so nervous to be sneaking around that he dropped the bowl and shattered it. He figured in his little kid brain that if he glued it together and hid it away in the cabinet before I saw it, then I would never know, so that's what he did, badly, and guess what ended up happening?" Isaac was grinning like he had already guessed exactly what happened and thought it was hilarious and definitely intended to hold it over Scott forever. "We didn't have that many bowls, and you know before you came we ate a lot of cereal in the mornings, so of course it wasn't long at all before I went to get a bowl and found the bottom two bowls stuck to the bottom of the cabinet and each other. Rafe was long gone by then, so I got to decide what we tried and I will have you know that there _is_ a solvent and it works _perfectly_ fine, just like I thought. So the moral of the story is: men who like to pitch fits and break things are useless, most problems can be fixed, and I am always right." Isaac smiled a little at that last part, too distracted by the bits before it to really appreciate it.

And then, like flipping a switch, he grinned a dashing, showman's grin, twirled the plate between his palms and held it up for her approval, then spun on his heel, and smashed it very dramatically on the ground in a perfect echo of what she'd done all those years ago. _See,_ he seemed to be trying to say, _I'm totally fine, we weren't having an uncomfortable conversation two seconds ago. None of this has bothered me. Pay no attention to the boy behind the curtain._

Melissa didn't buy it for a second, but she applauded with just as much fanfare anyway. Because breaking a plate without hesitation was progress and that deserved to be celebrated.

* * *

He may have stopped checking before picking the dishes _up_ six dishes in, but he didn't stop checking before throwing them until they were at least halfway through the box; she'd lost the exact count, but it was something like ten more dishes before he got to that.

She waited until he did it one more time (which was not the next dish, but the one after that) before telling him another story.

"Rafe couldn't wash dishes without breaking them, it seemed like." Isaac looked back with one eyebrow raised. Melissa rolled her eyes in agreement. "He always had an excuse, usually something about the soap being slippery or one of us distracting him or 'he just had a lot on his mind,' but eventually I started to wonder if he was doing it on purpose." Isaac turned away sharply, and started digging through the box like she couldn't tell that was just an excuse, like she wouldn't know he'd been just taking whatever dish was on top up to now. "To get out of having to do the dishes, you know?" she carried on anyway. "Probably not the first time, I figure, but eventually, there were just way too many times for it to be coincidence. And he's an athletic guy, so it wasn't a lack of coordination. But every time he broke a dish and started up with his excuses and arguments, I'd take over just to shut him up and it would be a good long while before I'd ask again."

"He was manipulating you," Isaac said, low and calm but with an edge that made her see for the first time the danger werewolves were supposed to be. His shoulders were tense and the hand he'd been resting on the edge of the box had gone white-knuckled, crumpling the cardboard (at the corner, which she knew meant he was probably using werewolf strength).

"Probably," she said evenly.

He whirled the rest of the way away from her and for the first time, he threw a dish—a glass, she thought—directly at the wall instead of the floor. It shattered spectacularly and probably left a dent; she assumed he'd used his werewolf strength for that, too, also for the first time.

His back was rigid and heaving, his head moving rapidly like he'd been startled by the action and was trying to figure out what had happened. He'd taken half a step backward.

Melissa took a moment to register that not only had she been startled too, but she'd also been genuinely scared for a second, flashing back to other times someone had thrown something just like that, in this very kitchen. Once she got herself under control, she called his name cautiously.

He immediately whipped around, wide-eyed and already stepping towards her. "Are you hurt?" he asked sharply.

"No," Melissa said, trying to calm him. "Are you?"

He blinked. Looked down like he hadn't considered it. Shook his head more like he was clearing it than answering her question. Then he looked back over her shoulder at where the glass had hit the wall. "I'm sorry." He turned back around to face her, but he didn't look up. He was making himself small again. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—" He gestured behind him.

"You were angry," Melissa guessed. Isaac shrugged. "It's okay to be angry," she assured him. "It's not okay to be violent because you're angry." He shrunk even further. "But you didn't hurt anybody or break anything that wasn't going to be broken anyway. And you know that it's wrong, don't you?" He nodded, a little frantically. "There. As long as you know what you did was wrong and you apologize and mean it—"

"I do."

"Then I forgive you. And since you didn't hurt anybody, I won't ground you."

"I would have," Isaac confessed. "If he'd been here."

"Maybe," Melissa allowed. "And then I would have grounded you. But I think you probably wouldn't."

"Why?"

"You're a good kid—" His eyebrows shot up. "You _are_. You're considerate and thoughtful and careful. You make us breakfast every morning, even though you don't have to, because you want us to have a healthy start. I know you've been secretly helping with the weekly cleaning—don't give me that look, two loads of laundry doesn't just do itself and I _know_ Scott didn't do it, and that was just in the last few days. You helped Scott fight off the alpha werewolves and Jackson because you didn't want anyone to get hurt. And you haven't hurt anyone, even on full moons. Even your dad, even though to my understanding you were a werewolf before he died. You study hard, put effort into everything you do. You're a good person, Isaac. I have every confidence that you wouldn't have thrown that glass if there was a chance somebody could get hurt."

Isaac looked ready to disagree.

"Are you going to argue," Melissa huffed, "or are you going to keep breaking things?"

And as usual, he dropped the argument before it even left his mouth.

He picked up a funky bowl and held it up for her approval, waiting for her nod before he threw it, carefully, onto the floor.

Baby steps.

* * *

By the time Isaac threw the last dish—tilting the empty box so she could see—he was almost back to his usual self. She left him surveying the mess he'd made to duck around the corner and grab the broom and returned to an expectant face.

"You want the broom or the dustpan?" she asked, lifting each. When he hesitated and settled on a shrug, she shoved the broom in his hand, grabbing the empty box off the table on her way down to the floor and settling it within reach. He automatically complied with the unspoken instructions, gathering the piece of glass and enamel and ceramic and whatever else into her waiting dustpan for transfer back to the box.

After a few minutes of silent work, Isaac spoke up, quiet, stilted. "My dad always had projects for me. To do." She looked up, trying to be supportive of whatever he was trying to say, but he must have seen her confusion because he paused and gestured around them, explaining, "You said this was a project."

"Ah. Sorry."

"It's okay," he said with a shy smile. "Good associations, right?"

She grinned and turned back to her work to give him a little privacy before asking "What was that like? Before, with your dad."

"Torture, mostly," he joked, but she had no doubt he was being at least partially literal. "I was always really bad at them and then it turned into a life lesson about how bad I am in general and then it just went from there."

"Well," Melissa said, trying not to imagine where it went from there. She smiled up at him and he paused, waiting. "You did really well with this one."

He brightened and straightened, but tried to brush it off as he went back to sweeping with, "That's because messing stuff up is my specialty."

"You didn't mess anything up today," she said firmly. "And as for life lessons, what's the lesson we learned today?"

"I'm more important than a coffee cup," he dutifully repeated, rolling his eyes. He was smiling like it mattered, though.

"That's right," she said approvingly.

She kinda felt like she could burst, pride and affection and grief all jumbled together as she looked at him, a little frazzled around the edges, but relaxed and smiling surrounded by broken dishes.

* * *

"Okay," Melissa said when they finally scraped up the last piece and dropped it into the box with a messy clink. "One more lesson and then I'm assigning you a project to work on on your own. Sound good?" He nodded, but he was starting to look a little exhausted, so she squinted at him in concern. "You can say no if you want to. No hard feelings, I promise."

He smiled. "I'm good." She thought he was probably pushing it for her, but that one was definitely one he was going to have to come to on his own, so she pushed ahead.

Or tried. Her attempt at standing had a little hiccup (she wasn't _that_ old, but she did have teenagers, so maybe she was old enough for her knees to lock up when she'd been squatting on the floor for about twenty minutes and shuffling around like a crab). "Help me up," she demanded, raising a hand.

He didn't smirk at her and make a comment about how old she was like Stiles would have. He didn't hover in concern and act like she was ready to go into a retirement home tomorrow like Scott sometimes did. He just helped her up, holding on for a second to make sure she was steady and then letting go. He was so her favorite kid right now.

"Okay," she said, opening the cabinet that contained her mugs, "what do you see?"

"Coffee cups," Isaac said reluctantly.

"Mmm, about a dozen of them," she agreed. "When Scott was four, he was determined to get me a Christmas present, but he had no idea what to get me, because he was four. He decided that because I like coffee, a coffee mug would be the absolute perfect present. And it kinda was, because every time I used it I thought about how he was thinking of me and wanted to get me the perfect present. And then my birthday came around and he decided that if it was a perfect present once, it would always be a perfect present, so he got me another coffee mug; it was still special, of course. And then Christmas, and he got me another one. And then so on and so on. When they were six, Stiles decided to get in on it, which means I was getting at least two coffee mugs every Christmas and every birthday. Stiles also nagged his parents about not getting anything for me, which means half the time they also gave me a coffee mug or two; since Claudia died, the Sheriff has been exclusively getting me coffee cups and it's become kind of an inside joke. This past Christmas, twelve years after Scott started this, he got me something other than a coffee mug for the first time. Stiles still gave me a coffee mug, ten years after he started. You're good at math; how many mugs would that be?"

"Sixty?" Isaac guessed.

"Probably," Melissa agreed, because she had no idea but that sounded high enough. "Do you see sixty mugs anywhere in this house?"

"No?" Isaac answered; it sounded like another guess.

"No," Melissa confirmed. "Any guesses why?"

"No?"

"They got broken." Isaac reacted like he definitely should have guessed that. "Scott broke some. Stiles broke some. I broke some. Rafe broke some. It never matters, because I'm probably getting at least three more for Christmas or my next birthday." She paused to make sure she had his attention. "Broken dishes happen, especially in the mornings when normal people are zombies who can't see straight. Broken everything happens. Life is broken pieces. If you can't fix it, move on. If it's not a person, it doesn't matter and it can be replaced or repurposed or both. Okay?"

He nodded, looking a little overwhelmed.

"Now," she said, "I've got a project for you, to do in your own time. No deadline, no specific rules, alright? And if you don't want to do it at all, that's fine, too." He nodded again, but like he was just agreeing to move things along. She squinted at him. "I'm serious." He smiled and nodded more sincerely this time. She still wasn't sure he fully believed her, but she'd take it.

She crossed to the box of broken pieces and put a hand on the side; Isaac turned to watch her, but stayed put. "Artists use these kinds of things for mosaics and sculptures and jewelry and I don't know what else. I think it would be good for you to find at least one piece you like to either put in a jar or make into something for you to keep to remember this, whatever you want, just make sure there aren't any sharp edges anywhere. You could probably find an artist or somebody to do something with anything you don't want. Or you could just throw them away and take joy in the fact that they don't matter in the long run unless you want them to. I'll leave it up to you."

She patted his shoulder and moved to go upstairs and leave him alone—she had the day off, after all, and there was a novel calling her name—but at the last second suddenly remembered his philosophy on injuries from this morning and panicked. She whirled around at the bottom of the stairs.

" _Don't_ cut yourself digging through that box," she ordered. He jumped and pulled his hand sharply from the box like he'd already been cut. "And if you do, you clean it _immediately_ and well. And come and get me if there's anything in it. You hear me?"

He nodded, wide-eyed. "Yes, ma'am."

"You be careful," she said, waving a finger at him. "I don't care if you heal, I don't want you getting hurt in the first place."

"I won't," he assured her.

"You better not."

* * *

If he cut himself, he didn't tell her about it.

* * *

There was a piece of ceramic that had probably been most of the handle of a mug in Isaac's jar two days later.

A week after "The Smashing," there was another piece of ceramic that had probably been about a third of the flat bottom of a mug, edges carefully sanded smooth, artfully strung on a leather string, an 'M' carefully painted on it, sitting on her dresser.

Two things stood out to her almost immediately after she finished admiring the craftsmanship: first, that the handle and the bottom were probably from the same mug, and second, that the blue of the ceramic reminded her of the color or Isaac's eyes.

She didn't mention the necklace at all to him, let alone her sentimental observations; he could be so skittish about that kind of stuff (or any attention at all, really) and she didn't want to make him uncomfortable, especially not when he was still walking around a little raw from the conversations they'd had that day.

She did tell everybody who commented on her beautiful and unique necklace that her son made it for her and that it matched his eyes and even, to some of the people she worked with, that he had kept a piece from the same broken mug. Anything more than that was private between her and Isaac, but about those things, she could gush.

* * *

Sometimes, particularly when Melissa worked extra-long shifts, one or the other of her boys brought her a meal.

Somehow, despite that fact and despite all three of them having been in the hospital for injuries (Isaac), illness (Scott), or visiting (Stiles) more than once, she still thought of the hospital and her boys as separate worlds.

Which is why it did not occur to her as anything more than a passing thought that her gushing over her new necklace to anyone who gave her the slightest opening might somehow get back to them.

Until Isaac delivered her dinner and stopped to ask Kathy at the front desk where he could find her and Kathy looked up and interrupted him by blurting out "Oh, that necklace does match your eyes."

If she was as naturally pale as Isaac, she'd probably have been just as red in that moment.


End file.
